High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Thomson problem is to determine the minimum energy configuration of N electrons on the surface of a sphere that repel each other with a force given by Coulomb`s law. The physicist J. J. Thomson posed the problem in 1904 after creating his so-called plum pudding model of the atom. Related problems include the study of the geometry of the minimum energy configuration and the study of the large N behavior of the minimum energy.